Venice has always been, since the Middle Ages, the ideal place for music.A French traveler wrote in the eighteenth century "in every home an instrument was played and one sang, music was played everywhere, or one ran to hear it played."Even the Venetian musical craft was famous anywhere: the instruments built here were sought after by professionals, collectors, and now enrich the collections of museums around the world.From 1501 when Ottaviano Petrucci printed the world’s first book of music, Venice was the music publishing capital.In no other city were there so many opera houses: the sets and the prodigious Venetian stage machinery defined a style and a taste that was imitated everywhere.Friederich Nietzsche wrote, "if I try another word for music, and I always come back to the only one, Venice".